Where the Wild Things Talk

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Director Spike Jonze on his long-delayed film.

By Jim Vejvoda

Spike Jonze has finally opened up about his long-delayed live-action adaptation of the classic children's book Where the Wild Things Are. The director talked to Ain't It Cool News about his film's lengthy post-production process, the studio's reaction to his initial cut and the overall difficulty in bringing Maurice Sendak's book to the screen. For starters, Jonze had to find a way to adapt the book without also losing what made it so special.

As he began working on the script, Jonze realized that "one of the things that has a lot of room to develop out of the book is who the wild things are. And once I realized that the wild things were sort of about wild emotions, then I suddenly felt like I had a way into it. I felt like I was following that idea, because wild emotions are scary because they're unpredictable, either in yourself or people that you're close to, and as a kid you don't know how to process them. You just take them at face value. And it's very hard to know, when you're close to somebody, where you stop and that person starts. It becomes very blurred, even as an adult, but as a kid those relationships are just that much more overwhelming and confusing and upsetting. So I think once I realized that, I didn't know what I was gonna write, but I at least knew that there was something to write there."

The Wild Things may be voiced by stars such as Forest Whitaker and James Gandolfini, but there are different performers inside the actual monster suits. Jonze recalled the rigorous physical demands that acting inside the creature suits required of his performers, many of whom had never acted inside such costumes before. "Those guys all trained intensively for months, they would go to the gym and work out, build up all these muscles that they would never use," the filmmaker said. "So they all got into incredible shape, and then we did about a month of rehearsals in the suits, so they made the suits their own. Everyday they'd be working with the people who made the suits, so we'd constantly be tweaking them and trying new things."

Warner Bros. has slated the Playtone production for an October 16, 2009 release.

For much more of what Spike Jonze had to say about Where the Wild Things Are -- and to see two new photos from the film -- check out Ain't It Cool News.